Just for fun

Before I begin another work of nonfiction, I am relaxing with the last Maigret I will pass on. (I resolved to thin those and the AChristies, and to not begin collecting another series). Honest. I picked up an Allingham at Bookaholic. (I think they are mostly out of print here in the US). I will them read and return to Bookaholic. May just have to pick them at library (IF they carry them).

I have simultaneously begun Tim O'Brien's July, July. OK, he writes much on the Vietnam Era. This deals with the era and people my age - well close, anyway. I first read his Going after Cacciato, one of his earliest but not his best known work. I think I also purchased The Things They Carried as an Audible book. But I am so behind on listening, I don't remember. :-(

Gaining perspectives

I read fiction because it feeds a part of my soul.
It can be an escape, or travel to another world. Or an illumination or recognition of a part of me that I had ignored.

I read nonfiction for different reasons. I am selective because I do not believe that nonfiction is necessarily the truth, and I hate having to make that distinction as it can interfere with the pleasure of learning something new.
And it bothers me that I can not absorb the factual part of everything I read.
Well, I recognize that nonfiction can give me new perspectives, and illuminate the rest of my life and ideas I encounter and re-encounter daily.
Case in point, an 'old' (1982) but singular overview of the Society of Jesus. Being Catholic I know a little about the Jesuits, but like the average person, I probably have more reputation and hearsay in my knowledge than solid information. Barthel's The Jesuits sheds a bit more light on this order of priests. Surprisingly, though when all is said and done, he doesn't really confirm or deny many of the rumors or accusations that create their mystique. He even admits that there is an issue with denial and being unable to confirm because of security reasons.

And, I found it disconcerting that lots of 'facts' and interesting ideas were thrown out with no development or support of them. And, he also mentions several times that his mss was reviewed by a Jesuit. So how objective could he be - really? Sadly, I don't see that Barthel has published much else on the subject.

Anyway, the book has served to raise my sense of awareness about the Counter Reformation and disdain for the early 20th century Popes particularly in regard to Germany. (The author is German.)

And I can appreciate the dilemma of identity crisis. They were founded as a militant missionary order, and the Church currently embraces a more ecumenical stance. What is the Jesuits' current raison d'etre? Will we ever know?

birthday celebration

not my birthday but A's.
I sent her package off to the land of ice and snow. The requisite items are expanding.
Selected new/used books - this year's selection includes D. Parker bio, three Holmes/Russell mysteries (which she has read but needs for her collection) and something different - J Harris's Five Quarters of an Orange.
Plus the annual birthday card featuring the toddler A. (I am learning to scan damaged negatives) AND a selection of specially designed bookmarks. I redid the ones I made a year or two ago, but this time I sealed them with clear packing tape. I included a true geek bookmark - two layers (sticky side together) of duct tape, embellished with the proper tassel. I can just see her rolling her eyes.

After Christmas

This week is going to be a balance of getting ready for class and reading, hopefully some creative stuff and a bit of reorganizing and cleaning.

A was good to get me books that were on either end of my book list - newer additions and ones that are getting dusty from being there so long. Although I am reading Cokie Roberts's Founding Mothers, I just had to begin the long-awaited Mourning Raga, the very last Ellis Peters volume I wanted to acquire. A claims they scoured Charing Cross looking for it but ended up getting it on Amazon. We both feel that Amazon is OK, but the greater charm is browsing and finding a book on a shelf to page through and savor, and greet as a long-awaited friend.

Only one volume for my Robert but he has been fascinated by the possibilities that lie within the pages of Forbidden Legos. ;-)

I think we are going to ship the new bookcase to the kids. I don't think R & I are up to another road trip to Minneapolis right now, and a UPS bill is considerably less pricey than the road trip.

I am already preparing my shopping list to Powells next month. Qualifying items must be used, hard-to-find or tuned to my own book aesthetic. You know what that is - the subject, often the author, the writing style, even the the type and layout and cover (yes, you can judge a book) all contribute to that aesthetic that sense of what you will enjoy.

Fall reads

The Borders sale is coming again, this time without A. :-(
I have just reread Montana 1948. It is spare and beautiful. I can hear his voice, I know the time and faces, the people are just like many I knew as a kid. The values, the accepted roles, the phrasings are familiar. Then as the story is played out you can feel the shock because it is so believable, as safe and ordinary as the lives were - the unthinkable was just below the surface.
(A different kind of storyteller altogether, Hitchcock spun his web of terror by telling stories about ordinary people as well.)

The Borders splurge

A and I don't really need to go to this sale - the Borders spring break sale for educators - 25% off. We can get books cheaper at Amazon, and the selection, obviously is much better. But it is a tradition she and I have shared for nearly 5 years and most likely we will not be able to repeat it, unless I go visit her during spring break.

She was excited and found some books she really wanted. I found an small atlas, inspiration from The Cake Doctor and a Collage Sourcebook and the missing books from a medieval series. Oh yes, and a lovely book by William Zinsser, On Writing Well that I have heard about lately.

We both agree that the DVDs and CDs are overpriced, but we had a great time.

My current read is a bio of Martha Gellhorn, and hopefully I can get through Osa Johnson's I Married Adventure before it is due. I am still listening to Daughters of Britannia. Strong women, indeed!

Audible volumes

I find that I am not listening to books as quickly as I did. But once I get the FM tuner working correctly in my Saturn that should change.
I did not realize that Prose's A Changed Man was supposed to be a satire, but on reflection, yeah I can see that.
I have started a non-fiction work, Daughters of Britannia, It is a look at the lives of the women - wives mostly who accompanied British diplomats and officers at the height of the Empire.

Transformation and evolution

My Robert built me two beautiful mission style oak bookshelves this winter. It is the first time in three years (at least) that books are not stacked on the floor.

I have purchased so many books lately and filled in the holes of collections that my passion for collecting has slowed a bit. I am beginning to look critically at what is on the shelves and to consider a bit of restraint and pruning.

The books on my list tend to be more obscure and expensive so I will buy fewer when A and I go to Borders later for the educator appreciation sale.

I went to Bookaholic yesterday to look for a world atlas - since I am reading a geography primer. The only one they had was not bad - being a National Geographic edition, but I was not prepared to spend 32.50 on a used half-price volume. I was also annoyed because they are evidently overstocked and would only take about a third of the books I brought in to trade. Guess I will see if I can trade online or donate at Christmas.

Current reads: finished L.R. King's Keeping Watch, now reading Why Greenland is an island, Australia is not and Japan is up for grabs, the aforementioned geography primer. In the meantime I need to read the latest Jane Austen mystery before we go to Springfield. A started it and left it behind so I should get it to her. Next in the queue is a bio of Martha Gelhorn.

Great online find: bookcloseouts.com Not as focused as Daedalus or inclusively trashy as Hamilton but some great finds - I spent 35.00 on 7 books - some that were flat hard to find new or used, some surprises. True, you can find a great price on used copies of almost anything through Amazon, but unless there is a pressing need I do not usually go that route.

There is no pattern...

I grab chunks of time to read. There is no rhyme or reason to what I consume. For a while I was reading Maigrets just so I could bid them farewell, and head them to Bookaholic.

It is tough to read anything serious if you can only read in spurts. I may just have to abandon or totally restart my reading of The Seekers. I have to absorb and understand, and there aren't any long uninterrupted period in which I can do that, or even want to, these days. Maybe it's just the subject for now.

My shelves are mounting with other volumes that beckon. I realize that many of the books I have had on my wish list for so long have taken residence here. I picked up and have become absorbed with Lahiri's The Namesake. Why I have become interested in India-American writers recently, I am not sure, except that their names have topped many recommended and commended lists in the past few years.

Cleaning house

I have determined to thin out the library a bit, rereading the Maigrets and sending them off to Bookaholic. I know Simenon was quite a change from the popular Christies of the era, but neither the plots, or characters really seem to want me to revisit them. It is a bit better to visualize Paris, having my own memories of last fall, but still, it is hard even to know what decade they depict without looking at the copyright.

Now that the studio is almost ready to move back into, my poor homeless books can be pulled off the floors of the other rooms. Maybe even new bookshelves! Maybe.

One of these days I may even coordinate my wish lists, both written and virtual (Powells, Amazon, and more temporary and spontaneous, Hamilton and Daedalus.)

I am looking forward to the fall sale at Borders. It is not as not much fun without A but it is still a good reason to splurge.

And speaking of splurges, I sprang for an ipod and subscription to audible.com. I am trying to be very selective and pick books that I probably would not read. It is a bit hard to describe, a good listen is subtly different from a good read, especially one that you might want to go back and revisit. I started with Jeanette Walls's The Glass Castle. Parts of it just make my hair stand on end (oh, wait, it already does stand on end) - two parents who were so supremely self-centered, and negligent, yet instilled values that (I think) enabled their children to survive and become mature, reasonably sane productive adults. (Thank you, Sonja for the recommendation)

Squeezing in reading time

For many reasons, I haven't been devoting much time to reading, not as much as I would like anyway; it isn't time, maybe more a lack of discipline and focus.

I am nearly through with The good, the bad and the difference. A New York columnist examines ethical questions posed by his readers. It is interesting, and thought-provoking, although I do not agree with all of his conclusions. He is distinctly a New Yorker, Jewish, a man who does not appear to be a parent. Actually I think the questions themselves and what they say about us today, are as intriguing as his responses.

*Sigh* I am still not finished with The Seekers, but each time I delve in I learn bits and pieces more about my cultural heritage (Western, Catholic) and how our traditions, ideas have evolved as they have. OK, I did not take Western Civ when every other Jayhawk had to, but would I have appreciated it? I doubt it. So, it is illuminating now.

Oh, yes, I have been treasuring Vreeland's Life Studies. How very special they are! She imagines the contemporary ordinary people whose lives are touched by a variety of Impressionists and post-Impressionists - van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Cezanne, Modigliani, Renoir and more. The stories are sometimes sad, but always moving.

Spring reading

I am settling back into Boorstin's The Seekers. So far it has been an illuminating overview of the origins of our great thinkers and great ideas of the Western world. All those concepts we just take for granted - the structure of our universities, the roots of the ways we think and believe. How much we owe all those 'dead white guys.'

I have been intrigued with philosophy for some time - I don't know much about it, it sounds abstract and dry (a negative) but I know that I like to see the big picture - to understand the background of things, and see how they all fit together - (a plus). So this book should provide me with a frame of reference and spark to explore some more.

Borders has their spring educators appreciation weekend, and a stack of books followed me home. I had the sense this time to go with a specific list - which helped.

I finished Teacher Man about two weeks ago. It was a startling find at Bookaholic - it has only been out a few months (still in hardback) and I picked it up for about 6.50. Anyway he is a good storyteller, that is his strength, not necessarily a great writer. In this his third book his self-deprecation was starting to get annoying though (you made it, you are a Pulitzer Prize winning best-selling author, OK, Frank?)

Reflections

Eats Shoots and Leaves is a hoot. A funny bewailing of the lack of attention to punctuation. The author does not really divide it this way, but there is the punctuation lapses that really confuses ordinary communication, and there is the fussier stuff that I think 95% of English-writing people do not really understand. She addresses both. I never completely understood the use of colons or semicolons and I think my writing skills are pretty decent. Well, it was fun in a dry, witty way.

In The Seekers, Boorstin remarks on how Socrates and Plato deplored the written word. The dynamics of the spoken word, they claimed, is the true source of knowledge. I assume they meant the exchange of ideas, rather than a one-way bucket-into-brain transfer. What would they think of art, of any our media today??

Sharing

Jeannie has asked to borrow a copy of Imitation of Christ. I will try to find one of her own this weekend or just let her borrow mine.

I think Kalli would like to read The Phantom Tollbooth since she was kind enough to loan me Eats Shoots and Leaves and she is an secondary ed English major.

I will make it through the Marquez's stories yet. Plus I am absorbing, however slowly, Boorstin's The Seekers. I get distracted by brain candy and SuDoku, of course, but as long as the breaks aren't too long I feel OK about it.

I am thinking about going through the Maigrets and with a once-through read, moving them out of my collection. I can't really convince myself to really like them enough to keep them around.

Holiday fun

OK, I finally finished Breach in the Wall. It had long lost its charm but I wanted to make it through. It ultimately did widen my perspective of 20th century China, which was pretty narrow from the start.

Took the Borders gift card and a coupon, plus a stack of volumes to "recycle" at Bookaholic to add to the charming fun I got for Christmas. Anissa took inspiration from my wishlist, to find books I might like. Yay! Instead of feeding each other food to express our love, we give each other books to feed our psyches!

Newest (unpurchased) find -Vreeland's Life Studies

Children's books forever!

On her Christmas wishlist Anissa expressed a desire for a beautifully illustrated edition of The Secret Garden. At 23 she still maintains a love for the books she loved at 9. That's my girl!

One discussion in the house a few weeks ago centered on my own library. She told me she would donate it. "Libraries are so personal," she reasoned, implying that my tastes do not match hers, adding that she would have no room. Robert intervened; there would be at least one room in their house dedicated to books he insisted. OK, I said I will leave the books to Robert then to make sure they stay in the family.

What's on your wish list?

I have filled in a lot of gaps in my own library the past year so the hard-to-find list is getting shorter - and more expensive.

P.D. James has a new book coming out. As she advances in years, I always fear her current one will be her last. And, Frank McCourt has one that may be worthwhile. Tis was a disappointment, but it seems that a passage of his writing that attracted me to him related to his teaching years, which is the subject of his latest memoir, Teacher Man.

Team of Rivals looks interesting, a study of Lincoln's team-building skills with his cabinet of bitter political enemies. I am waiting patiently for Diamond's Collapse to appear in paperback, or remainders. The same with Mark Helprin's The Pacific and other stories. I find my interests moving to language and logic, too. Even some poetry.

The design books I eye (aye!) are so pricey but maybe someday price won't matter (or maybe it always will no matter how much disposable income I have) Just like Schama's Rembrandt's Eyes. $35 for a paperback. Ouch!!

Nourishing the brain

Oranges! What a lovely book! I know, no one can quite believe that McPhee wrote a book about nothin' but oranges. Lots of lore, and anecdotes, facts too about liquid sunshine. Changed my attitude a bit about 'artificial' handling or the fruit (wax, coloring, gassing). Of course, I know that there is another side. Books like these become dated- it was finished in mid-60s, and it makes me wonder how much things have changed since then. It is really an interesting profile of a fruit industry that on one hand is so... managed- a science with its mechanization, chemistry etc. and on the other hand is so vulnerable to weather and nature itself - pooh- the trees are all hybrids, one type of stock grafted onto another. And the seeds will produce who knows what???

Now I am on to a charming portrait of China, Shanghai in particular, The Breach in the Wall. The author is a Westerner who grew up as the daughter of a tea merchant in China. So far I am particularly intrigued with her brief non-scholarly, non-political description of China and its relationship with the rest of the world. She waxes a bit rapturous at times, but hey, it is her story so she should be able to tell it the way she wants. I am sorry it has taken me so long to dust it off. OK, so the jacket is ugly, she has managed to draw me in at last.

Book juggling

My reading lately is done in snatches. That is OK for Hemlock at Vespers a collection of Sr. Fidelma stories, a bit more difficult for the Colette biography. Dense with info as many good bios are, the narrative gets a bit hard to follow if you keep have to backtrack and figure out who is who. But so far, it is worth the effort.

In a rare flash of decorating with personality - I pulled out my collection of bookmarks and arranged them in a basket on top of a bookcase. :-)

I may be skipping the October sale at Borders, partly because I have been too indulgent lately, partly because their selection has been disappointing the past year or so.

Book buying in London!

I know how blasted heavy books can be to lug around. So I tried hard not to buy, but Anissa insisted we hit the used bookstores in Charing Cross. She knows my weaknesses too well.
First quick round found a Simenon quartet, and one Farrell volume I had been seeking. The second a few days later rounded up more brain candy- Michael Jecks, Peter Tremayne and the other two parts of the Farrell trio. Anissa wheedled the latest Russell/Holmes books. Yum. Actually the venerable Blackwells bookstore was a bit disappointing in its selection, but then I was trying to be very focused on some older hard to find whodunnits. Not enough time or luggage space to do it all.

Oh what did I read there? Robert's Necromancer got finished in Paris even though neither Anissa nor I are completely sure why it ended the way it did.

I read Simenon's Little Saint- "one of his favorites"??? I should know better- I have not really liked any of his works that do not feature Maigret. I wanted to read it to get a snapshot of Paris. Unfortunately his work is not anchored in a time period so it is hard to visualize.

For brain candy I read Jecks's Belladonna at Belstone. A fine distraction. That is what traveling and books are all about, aren't they?